Everyone hates this Key Account Manager, but company won't act

Question

As a background, I am an executive in the Engineering and Operations field. In the last few months, several employees from different roles (Accountants, Project Managers, Engineers, and two separate Managers) have filed formal complaints about this Sales employee, let’s call him Jim, whom has the bad habit of ignoring any policy and roles and running the company like it's his own.

A few examples:

• Jim will agree on his own discounts and pricing with customers without regards for our accounting and contract practices.
• Jim will commit to work and travel hours without approval from anyone nor considering the law (he’ll just tell the customer that the Engineer will work 12hr shifts).
• Jim will make up products and features or training programs that don't exist, and that we can't deliver.

Jim used to be an executive at a different company, but for some unknown reason he decided to jump over and be a Key Account Manager in our Sales department. He reports to the Sales Director (let’s call him Charles) and not to me, so I can't discipline him.

Regardless, I escalated to Charles multiple times, and also approached Jim directly in a non-confrontational way.

Ultimately, the answer from Charles is that “it's just his personality” while Jim feeds us empty apologies and immediately goes back to his ways.

I even went to the President of the organization, who just said “there's two sides to each story” and basically brushed me off.

The issue is that my teams are unhappy when they work on his projects, and they all want to be removed or end up doing a terrible job / taking much longer since they have to work around Jim’s unrealistic commitments to the customers (which causes budget overruns and angry customers).

What to do? Did anything like that ever happen to you? How did you make it into a win-win scenario?

Answer 1

The problem here is our (western?) society and how we do business. If Jim were selling to consumers, your company would face lawsuits right now. Becaue there is consumer protection agencies. But Jim is not. Jim is selling to other businesses.

The problem here is, that every business today has those guidelines, that tell their representatives to buy from the cheapest seller. And while that makes sense to remove corruption and guarantee fairness, it fails horribly if you don't hold your business partners accountable for what they promised. If you always buy from the cheapest, even if they are a crook, then crooks flourish.

An example:

Your are a company with a yard. You need it raked. You want to hire a yard-raking-company. In good faith and according to all your guidelines about competition and fairness and compliance, you get offers from three companies:

• Company A promises to rake your lawn. With professional rakers it costs $1000 during the day with acceptable noise levels
• Company B promises to rake your lawn. On the weekend with high school students, it costs $500. Sounds a little fishy, but a good offer.
• Company C has Jim. Jim promises that professional rakers will rake your lawn with zero noise over night for $250.

Now you personally know, that that is impossible. $750 would be a great offer, $500 is a little sketchy but there is an explanation for it, but $250 is madness. No way this could be a sustainable business, something must be wrong. But your personal knowledge and intuition do not count. If you don't take up Jim on their very obvious "best offer", it wil be you, who has to explain themselves to their boss how you could violate corporate guidelines so brazenly.

So your company takes up Jim's offer.

Jim cannot deliver. The people are late, they don't rake as good as you wanted, and in the end it costs $1000 and then another $1000 to actually get the half-assed work done properly, by the same people that blew it the first time.

But you complied with all your jobs guidelines. You did nothing wrong. It was only after you took the obvious best offer, that "unexpected problems" occurred that made the work go over budget and over deadline.

This is why Jim, the sleazy dishonest scumbag, is still at their job. Because they make the company money. By lying. Had he been honest, another company would have gotten the contract.

While I detest this behaviour, I cannot really put it all on Jim. Those policies, to go with the cheapest offer, instead of the "best", or at least put clauses in the contract about what happens if the "cheapest offer" turns up unexpected extra costs, it squarely on the buyer, too. If you buy a product or service you know is too cheap to be true, it's partially your own fault if you get scammed.

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So back to your question, what do you do? You still work according to your contract and guidelines. If you work 8 hour shifts, you stop working after 8 hours. If the customer complains about it, send them to Jim. If you cannot make a dealine Jim promised? Don't. Jim knows this. Lying about it is his business model. It is their problem. Tell everyone honestly what you are doing and when it will be done and let Jim handle the lying.

I would ask you to consider working in a company where the sales representatives are not lying, but that is a hard sell. Given the fact that my company has an app in the app store that promises a feature I have not even started developing yet, I would feel like a hypocrite. Sales people will lie if they think they will get away with it. It's just the nature of the game. Your best course is to accept it, and don't get bothered by it.

Only measure yourself against what you promised. Ignore sales reps. Yours and theirs.

Answer 2

That is quite the pickle you have got there. There are some options - and none of them are great.

The first thing is that if you have raised it with Management and Management are happy with the status quo - you need to be prepared to hand in your resignation.

This SE often gets critiqued for this advise - but ultimately if you don't have the authority to fix the problem - then you either lump it, or leave.

The next possibility is a form of Malicious Compliance. I am presuming that when Jim does these non-standard deals, that everyone else just falls in line to make it work in front of the customer...

Stop doing that

Outright refuse to do any non-standard project or with anything that wasn't authorized. Each time this happens, make the refusal in writing, push it back to Jim and Charles.

Make it Charles problem - because if you don't then there is no reason for Charles to take action

Now - I should add - this is a high risk strategy as they might give a direct instruction to JFDI - and if you refuse at that point, it is insubordination.

Answer 3

Years ago I was in R&D as an Electrical Engineer who did both hardware design and firmware for that hardware.

Our company was trying to break into new markets in Europe that was hoped to be very profitable, so there were all sorts of crazy deals that our salespeople were trying to put together to get a foot in the door.

One of the products that I worked on had a 32KB ROM the software was crammed into. To make it fit, we had to compile different software builds depending on two things: the UI language (English, French, German, or Spanish) and a lookup table to support the country's television system (NTSC, PAL, or SECAM). Due to the low volumes as we were just getting started with these products my desk was basically part of the assembly line; I would get e-mails from the factory projecting they would need X number of ROMs with this build and Y with that build each week. I would program, test and label 10-30 chips on a Friday afternoon and walk them over to the production line so they were ready on Monday morning.

One day I get a phone call from my boss, telling me that he had just got off the phone from a salesman who had sold two units to a customer in Germany to be delivered later this month. Hooray!

Because the customer was close to the French border, they needed the software with German language and the French TV system (SECAM).

I told my boss "That's great! I wish we made something like that." He was silent for a few seconds and then responded, sounding irritated: "That's why I'm calling you."

I asked him if he really was asking me to start the process to create a new product in our system for the sake of a sale of two units. Did he really want to submit a new version of software to our testing department? A new model with parts diagrams showing this combination to go through our mechanical engineering department? A new manual written and printed? Did he want our purchasing system to automatically allocate parts for future warranty work? Submit this new product for the EU equivalent of FCC testing?

He clearly did not understand how much this was going to cost the company or how much work would be required for this salesman to earn their commission.

And then we went ahead and did it anyway. I still believe it was a mistake and the whole division was a shambles, but I did my job and learned an important lesson about boundaries: I gave my best and professional advice, and it was received and ignored.

I was directed to do something that was not illegal or immoral so I did it to the best of my ability. The outcome of that decision or the future of the company as a whole was not in my control, so it was also no longer my problem. I still reflect on that experience.

Another view that you may think is insightful: https://blog.codinghorror.com/but-you-did-not-persuade-me/

EDIT (26Aug2024):

I thought about this over the weekend, and while it was clear in my mind while typing my answer, I didn't emphasize this point: Maybe no one is doing anything to rein in your account manager because he's doing exactly what your company leadership wants him to do. Maybe he was brought in to "shake up those lazy engineers" or to "think outside the box" or blah blah blah...

From your perspective he is running rogue and no one is bringing him back into line, but it could be because someone higher up the food chain in your organization has either given him orders (or at least permission) to operate this way. You've tried to let the powers that be know something isn't right, and they've chosen to not change it. At this point you have to decide if you can work like this or change what is in your control.

Answer 4

As established by you and other answers, you don't sit in the right position in the chain of command to reprimand Jim. That's where that track ends.

However...

Jim takes it upon himself to call them directly and “kindly coerce them” into doing it

There's your opening.

Jim likely does not have the authority to override your authority vis à vis engineer staffing and scheduling. He's interrupting your management.

Let's us a simpler example: if Jim promises a free yacht to every customer, is it your fault for failing to deliver that yacht? Nope.

The same principle applies to Jim making promises to customers about engineer availability. He gets to make whatever promises he wants to make, you don't get to stop that. That's his job. You do, however, have to abide by reality, and cannot be held responsible for Jim's unfounded promises. If his promises fall through because he asked for something that could not reasonably be delivered, that should blow back on Jim, not you or your engineers.

The first step here is to stop entertaining Jim's folly. Don't bend over backwards to make their dream a reality. Get your engineers to work their scheduled hours, and stop everything that goes beyond that.

“kindly coerce them”

Have your engineers concretely explain how this coercion takes place. What does he tell them?

Empower your engineers to not agree to anything Jim says, instead redirecting every request to you (or another relevant authority who is willing to hold Jim to account for their request).

Whenever any request goes out of bounds, indicate that you cannot deliver the request. Don't provide more information than you have to. The more information you provide, the more openings you give him to argue with you. State very clearly that e.g. the current schedule is already full and your engineers cannot commit to more work at this time.

Whether Jim already promised the customer or not is inconsequential. He doesn't manage the engineers, you do. Without your say so, Jim has no reasonable expectation on what the actual availability is.

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What to do? Did anything like that ever happen to you? How did you make it into a win-win scenario?

I'm in software development (it's unclear what kind of engineers work for you). Non-technical leadership making calls without any kind of technical expertise backing their decision is the daily bane of people in my position.

Simply put, I engineer a discussion format that makes it very clear what the consequences of the decisions are.

For example, I don't let people add extra work into an established sprint. There are a given amount of manhours in our sprint (based on 2 weeks, developer presence, and their contracted working hours).
If ad hoc work is urgent, I don't block it. But I have a list of all the work, both scheduled and on the backlog, and it's ordered by priority, with a clear marking for the cut-off point of what can be done within the given sprint. Simply put, when they drag something upwards, everything else sinks down in priority.

This avoids the issue of accepting to help out on an urgent issue, and then later having to explain why the original deliverable was delayed. Instead, it makes it very clear at the time that prioritizing one deprioritizes another.

I give people trust until they breach it, and when breached, I stick to the formalities of availability scheduling. At the end of the day, I can stick to "the sprint has locked down, we can look at it next sprint at the earliest". In reality, I do accept doing things ad hoc, but only because the requests are reasonable and are met with the understanding that this delays the original sprint goals.

Jim has very clearly achieved that status, so you should stop trying to do whatever hare-brained idea he has cooked up for you. Stick to your schedule.

Answer 5

TLDR. The problem may be endemic to the company. The cure may be to leave.

My experience of this kind of behavior is that it's a result of having a culture where getting a sale on the books is considered the goal of the business, regardless of what happens then.

Typically this happens when the business is managed by people who were themselves sales staff in the past. They think only about sales and that everyone else is there to support them. They think that sales drive everything else, and they have limited or no real understanding of the production and support side of things, where product development and testing can take years.

Sales and marketing tend to be driven by quarterly sales figures targets, not be year-on-year revenue figures. That's the metric used to evaluate sales, not real revenue.

Typically it's also related to performance bonuses for the sales and marketing people being tied into "quantity not quality" kind of numbers. Once the sale is recorded, the sales and marketing side tend to never have to think about it again and it becomes a support side issue. So support get the blame when they cannot fulfill the wild promises that are made by sales and marketing.

I've also noted that sales and marketing people tend to have no technical understanding (even on an overview-type level) of what is actually involved on the technical (implementation) side of things. They don't really comprehend that from idea to product can take years (especially when a product requires certification to meet quality standards).

My worst experience of this led me to simply leave. I was the senior developer and simply saw no point in waiting for a nervous breakdown or heart attack to kick in in the madhouse of a company.

Answer 6

Understand "the second side".

Likely, the thinking at management level is actually "rules are there to force the losers to reach a certain level of performance, not to limit the winners".

And sales equal revenue. Which will make that person look a winner in their eyes.

If management has themselves a sales background, it is even more likely. A model of responsibility sharing that basically goes "Sales' job is making promises, Rest of the nerds' jobs is keeping them" can be deeply ingrained in people of that background.

EDIT: The solution would be to leave, or get transferred internally to have less interaction with that individual, or accept or co-opt the given situation.

Answer 7

You can estimate the extra costs of Jim's projects, and the losses incurred because your staff aren't available to work on other things. Do that. Tell your own management about them.

It's clear Jim is allowed to do this by Charles, who either doesn't know, or doesn't care, about the trouble Jim is causing. Charles can only be reined in by other people at the same level or higher, so you need to get them on the case.

Answer 8

Since your complaint is ignored or brushed off, then the complaint must come from the customer.

Similar to advice above, do a standard job, do not put in extra or try to cover or make up for Jim's lies. When Jim's false promises fall flat explain to the customer "I'm sorry we can't do that/that's simply not possible, Jim intentionally lied to you, he does that all the time. I've reported Jim's behavior a number of times, but the boss has his head in the sand about it, and it's really out of my hands" Then give them the contact information for the boss & tell them to direct the complaints about Jim to the boss. If you know that other sales personel, for example "Bob" & "Alice", do a good job giving customers real service & expectations give their contact info to the customer and say "Next time ask for Bob or Alice, they'll give you honest sales services." If you're worried about your own job, you can ask the customer to not mention your name.

This way the complaints about Jim will start to pile in, and Jim's sales figures will also dwindle. Hopefully the boss will then actually start to notice & care about the problem & actually do something corrective.

If it works it will be a win-win-win-win, the customer wins by getting better service, your company wins by giving better service, the honest sales people win by getting more sales to their credit, the workers win by not having Jim giving impossible work promises.

Answer 9

There are three ways to handle this, one may benefit you personally, the other two don't change much of anything except your peace of mind.

You can jump on board and support Jim and if done properly become a key figure in achieving goals, generating revenue, and exposing your work to the hierarchy as Jim becomes reliant on you. Eventually Jim becomes a stepping stone for you.

You can cry about it and get frustrated if nothing is done. With no real leverage to make a change but bringing yourself to the hierarchy's attention in a potentially negative light.

You can ignore it and concentrate on your own responsibilities and quietly wait to see if Jim falls to pieces, which may, but probably won't happen.

Answer 10

what does your work contract say about working 12-hour-shifts?

Your employer cannot just decide that your work contract does not apply anymore. If your work contract stipulates 40-hour work weeks then you are more than entitled to keep to that.

You attract more flies with honey than with vinegar

Now you can approach this situation with an aggressive attitude or you can see it as an opportunity. If your employer needs extra shift work from engineers then this seems to me like an excellent chance to renegotiate your work contracts.

I'm sure most engineers would not mind a little extra money on top of there current salaries at the end of the month for a few extra shifts.

It could be that your employer is experiencing growth that they did not expect and as you might expect it is hard to pass up paying clients.

Your acceptance of extra workload may even lead to the title of 'team-player' from management.

Answer 11

Give up on trying to fix it and join his side. Make the costs visible to your superiors and communicate and track when he does things that disrupt your team, but otherwise give him the best support you can.

The job of everyone in the company is to sell things to customers. It's the only reason the company can exist or employ people. Part of this is allowing engineering teams to develop products in an orderly and sustainable way (as it sounds like you want to do), but part of it may require putting up with a bit of chaos and stress to make a sale.

I would think of it in terms of two competing interests: He represents the pressing need to sell things right now under whatever terms you can get. You represent the need to manage engineering workloads and maintain order in the company R&D department. Both are important interests, but it is OK if in that negotiation you don't get everything you want. It may be that the size of the revenue at stake is large enough that wonky pricing and some freelance commitments are a totally acceptable downside to winning the business. That's not him being bad. That's just him doing what he can to advocate for the part of the company's interests that falls to his responsibility. If he goes too far, then you can raise it with your mutual superiors and rebalance, but an occasional 12 hour day at a company that makes money is way better than 8 hour days at a company that's about to lay off all its engineers.

Finally, I would look at the negotiation with the sales reps as a way to do your job even better. He is in direct contact with the customer and he has important information about what they want and what tradeoffs you should make. If your team ends up supporting his half-baked requests and making a sale, that will often be more valuable than whatever other priorities they would have worked on. Making things that people want to buy is hard and the chaos this guy causes might sometimes be helping you to do a better job of building the right things.

Bottom line: generating revenue is way more important than keeping every team perfectly happy. If this guy is delivering revenue, putting up with him is worth the secondary hassle of having to clean up a few messes.